Peril in the Pines Ch. 05

"What we're beginning to understand is that even though we don't know who they are, we may know where one or more of them work."

"Where's that?"

Dolan looked as if he were in agony, as he answered, "Same cop shop where I do."

Detective Dolan and I walked over to look at the tailing piles and continued to toss ideas around. As preposterous as it seemed, It was starting to make sense to me, and I could see that the brick business had the potential to be one of the biggest criminal schemes in history, and all very easy to operate because of its total simplicity. The income it would produce was so great that there was no need to operate it every day or even every month. The simple, dumb looking bricks were so inconspicuous that they could be stored in plain sight. If necessary, bricks without capsules inside could be made to hide the ones with the valuable payload. The whole scheme would look so profitable and foolproof that it would appeal to a state employee, offering a huge return on a small investment without putting his position in the community in jeopardy.

"Have you planted any bugs around here? I should think the head man would come by to check up on his equipment."

"No, we haven't, but we can't be sure that the bad guys haven't. My problem is that if I check out the necessary stuff from our stockroom to bug the place, it leaves a paper trail that one of our own could pick up on, and that blows the game. Actually, I wanted to ask if you'd do me a favor. Could you get some surveillance devices from the county that we could install here?"

"Sure, I don't know why not. Hold on a minute." I keyed my lapel mike and asked Becky if the Sheriff was there. He got right on. "Sheriff, I want to pursue a possible lead in the brickyard case. I may have to use some bugs and related items."

"Go right ahead. You don't even have to tell me that you're giving Dolan a hand. He's a good guy and he'd do it for us. Better not tell him what I said or you'll blow my crusty image."

"You heard the man. Come on back to the Sheriff shop with me and we'll get busy on it."

I radioed Vince on the way in, and asked him to meet me there. I took him and Dolan into my office and we discussed how we'd handle the loan of equipment from our end. What made it easy is that we still had an active case on the bricks, with a county case number. We hadn't closed it because we didn't have the responsible person in custody yet. So it was all perfectly honest and legal.

As I should have suspected, Vince and Dolan knew each other from way back. This was law enforcement in the real world. We had enough different agencies at all levels, with their individual command structures, to make communication from one to another seem impossible. But the way it really worked was through an old boy network. Some guys even had a name for it, "the brotherhood of the badge." Guys who had worked together once on this case or that, guys who had gone through the academy together, distant cousins and in-laws, next door neighbors, even guys who shared common enemies, communicated mostly by cell phone calls that left no paper trail. They could work together quickly and efficiently to get the job done. But how could I have gained access to these invisible lines of communication and cooperation? My history in law enforcement was measured in weeks, so why wouldn't I be on probation where the good old boys were concerned? It started with the reputation of our department, which meant the reputation of our Sheriff, a good guy who had never stabbed anybody in the back who didn't deserve it. My ace in the hole was Vince, the consummate old timer, who knew and was known by key people all over the state. To top it all off, every cop in the state had heard what had happened out in the woods. Criminals who would kill a cop without thinking twice were the cause of insomnia and marital stress that made divorce so common among cops, and eliminating a few of the bad guys in a righteous shoot found instant favor among the brotherhood.

Just as police departments protect and serve their communities, the old boy network protects and serves the policemen. Given the right credentials, becoming accepted can be surprisingly quick, as I had already found. And according to what I'd heard, it's just as quick to lose acceptance for failing to be supportive, or for trying to use friendships to cover up corruption, or for simply being an asshole. My actions from now on would make my reputation flourish or die in a fraternity whose members carried badges and guns, and made life or death decisions in split seconds. Nothing for me to worry about, just something to bear in mind.

On the way from the mine to town, Dolan had called a private contractor he had used to bug and debug buildings. We didn't have long to wait until Fearsome walked into my office. Given the nickname, I had pictured some remarkable, scary looking person, but the man who walked in was the most unremarkable looking man I ever saw. He was average height, average weight, had average brown hair that was cut to average length, even had an average voice. This was Fearsome Fred Fox, or just plain Fearsome for short. If you saw him you'd never remember anything about him, which was just how he liked it. He listened to our description of the job and then went to our stockroom and selected just a few little boxes. I asked what he had in mind, and he said that the first step would be to examine the building, and next he would run a test to make sure he could transmit signals from the mine to the Sheriff shop successfully. We threw a stepladder into the back of Vince's crewcab pickup, which didn't look like a police vehicle and wouldn't stand out like my yellow Jeep, and went off to the mine.

Fearsome waved us back, and while we waited outside he entered the building with a little instrument in his hand. When he pushed a button it hummed, and it also had a meter with a thin needle that waved back and forth. Fearsome was wearing soft soled shoes, rather like real Indian moccasins. He breathed softly, walked silently, never bumped into anything, and if we didn't see him we'd have never known he was there at all. When he joined us out in the open, he was just collapsing the antenna on his instrument, after which he slid it into a pocket sewn into his right pantleg down by his knee, that reminded me of a carpenter's folding rule pocket. "Don't add or subtract any bugs from that building. It's got audio and video pickups all around, and whoever did the job knows his trade. Any conversation anywhere inside, even way back in the corners, should be picked up clearly. What's needed here is to add another transmitter, so that whatever the bad guys can hear and see, you can hear and see it, too. We can use a voice activated receiver back at your office, with a recorder switched on and off by the receiver.

"Here's the tricky part. You'll want to know who's listening to these bugs, so to do that we'll need to find where the handshaking signal is coming from, that tells the transmitter that its signal is being received. The transmitter here doesn't have the power to send very many miles with a useful signal to noise ratio, so the receiver should be nearby, and it won't be hard to sweep for that return signal. I'll use an airplane to do it, and it won't take over an hour. We'll do it during daylight, with a crop dusting trainer that a friend of mine owns. He'll go through the motions of dusting cotton fields, but I'll be in the student pilot's seat with some of my instruments. By tomorrow night I'll have the exact location of the receiver, and if conditions are very good I may even be able to tell you the make and model of it."

Two days later, Fearsome set up a receiving and listening center in my office. A bookcase near my desk held a receiver that looked like a cell phone and a recorder not much bigger that could hold several months of conversations. I would be able to check the audio every day to see what, if anything, we'd picked up, and any portion of the memory that seemed interesting could be copied and taken to Dolan's home, where he and Fearsome had set up a safe viewing center in his basement rec room.

The trap was set. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the mouse to step into it.

JAN'S BAD DAY

Jan was late getting home, and came in feeling pressured by the need to supply an evening meal that she hadn't even had time to think about. I shut off the dinnertime news broadcast and said, "Don't even take off your jacket. We're going out to eat. Where would you like to go?"

"No idea. Surprise me."

"Italian food okay.?"

"Great. Anything I don't have to cook will do. One of those afternoons at work."

"Want to talk about it?"

"I had a lot to do, more papers than I could conveniently carry, and I was trying to decide what I wanted to bring home with me, when Joyce Stuart said something about outlawing handguns. The stupid woman wouldn't know which end of the gun the bullet comes out of, but the fact that she has never shot a gun of any kind somehow makes her an expert with the opinion that life would be perfect if only we didn't have guns all over. Then she got warmed up and said that no woman should ever be allowed to touch a gun because their hands aren't strong enough to shoot them, and in fact every woman who has ever possessed a gun has accidentally shot herself or somebody else, and so on and on and on.

"I tried to keep my cool, but finally I said to her, 'Joyce, you don't know what you're talking about. Don't make sweeping statements based on misleading information you've been fed, cultivated by your appalling ignorance and gullibility.' She got furious that anybody would challenge her opinions, and started shouting at me out in the hallway. The principal heard her screechy voice and came running, thinking that something terrible was happening. Fortunately, by then I was just leaning against the wall saying nothing, watching her erupt. The principal took her by the arm and gently walked her into his office, still spouting her nonsense. So that's how my day ended. I went back into my classroom and got my purse, set all the papers on the desk, locked up, and walked out. That woman is so dumb that every week she's got another screwball notion to push that's one per cent fact and all the rest hot air. I'm glad that I haven't got a kid in her class. People that dumb shouldn't even be allowed out of their houses, let alone polluting the minds of innocent children."

"Maybe over dinner you'd like to tell me all about why the NEA opposes merit raises for teachers, and considers tenure a right granted by God, along with breathing air and walking on two legs."

"Don't get me started! Children come into the world knowing nothing, and that makes them favorite victims of stupid people who become teachers because they can't do anything else. They need to find some group of people who know even less than they do, and young kids fit that mold. But I've had it now. I'm going to get that stupid Joyce fired. It's either that or I'll have to quit teaching in that school. You may have to help me."

"Me? Why me? What do I have to do with teaching?"

"I need a very small voice recorder. Do you have one?"

"In my desk at work. About the size of a long, narrow cell phone. Or if you want to go even smaller there are some about as big as a matchbook. What do you intend to do with it?"

"I'll get the mother of a kid in Joyce's class to send her kid off to school with a bugged backpack. Every night the day's conversations get dumped onto a computer, and then the tirades get filed according to subject and date. And I think I know just the mother I need to get involved in this. Clara Smithers has a cute, bright little girl who sits in the front of the classroom. I'm going to call Clara and talk this over with her. Maybe I'll call her when we get home tonight."

"Boy, I hope I don't ever get you this upset. No telling what you might do to me."

"Oh, it's just that I hate to see what a bad teacher can do to a child's learning process. Some of these kids might be better off to stay home and watch television. And I think I have a right not to be badgered by stupid people trying to tell me that the sky is falling, or worse yet that it isn't falling but it's made of concrete."

"I'm not going to use one of the county's recorders for that, but I'll be glad to take you to the store to buy you one that would work well for that purpose. But I can't be involved in this campaign of yours. Anything that might even smell like an improper use of police power could cost me my job and make things bad for our whole department. You'll have to pay for it, and keep the receipt to prove that it's yours. If anybody asks, you bought it to record parent-teacher conferences, and you'd never dream of recording a person's voice without their permission. Clara Smithers asked to borrow it, and you let her take it. Period."

With that out of her system, for the moment, anyway, we had a very nice dinner. Jan had veal parmigiana and I had chicken cacciatore. For our salad course I ordered an antipasto plate and we split it. We came away well fed, with that glow that you get when your food has been prepared with great attention to all the small details. Even the house wine was good. At home, Jan spent most of an hour on the phone and came into the living room looking pleased with herself. I didn't want to hear anything about it, and instead I pulled her down next to me and kissed her on the neck. That started an hour long seduction that got us to bed, aroused. And later to sleep, exhausted, satisfied, and contented.

THE BRICK FACTORY

Every morning after the urgent business had been attended to, I would lock my office door and listen to any audio recordings that had come in from the mine building during the last 24 hours. Usually it wasn't anything at all, or perhaps a door banging in the wind. But finally one morning there were voices, and the words were disturbing. I called Detective Dolan and he showed up an hour later. I asked Becky to find Vince, and he arrived a few minutes later.

"So far there's been nothing on the recorder, and I can only infer that nobody has been there. Or if anybody was there, he didn't say anything. There have been sounds, like wind blowing, parts of the old building rattling, stuff like that. But here's where the voices start:"

"I kept telling you the press shouldn't be left here like that. This building isn't tight. The wind blows through here and carries dust and sand. Look down by your foot. Pretty soon this thing won't be able to make a brick any more."

"Quit yer belly achin'! That dust is just on the surface. Go out and get the generator runnin' and I'll put the machine through a cycle to show ya. Look in the mold cavities. That dust in 'em is the same thing I'm gonna load in there to make the next batch of bricks. All it did is make my job easier. Less to shovel. No way to keep the dust out of here, anyway. You close the door and the wind still comes through. Look up at all the places where you can see daylight coming through. Every one of those holes is like a little wind tunnel. You can hear the wind moaning in the tops of the trees and feel the draft in here at the same time. When the wind is out of the north it vibrates some of that corrugated roofing like a harmonica, and it sounds like a ghost wailing.

"You better make sure we got enough binder to make yer five hundred bricks. I'll go get the goodies outta the truck. What's in 'em this time?"

"I don't know and I don't care. As long as they pay for the bricks, they could have dog shit in there, it's all the same to me."

"Yeah, that'd be the day, when they'd pay five hundred a brick to move dog shit."

"This time I got a thousand, so they must have something pretty hot in those cans."

The voices trailed off and there were sounds of doors banging in the distance.

Dolan's eyes got big. "What could they have in there? Say that the can, what we've been calling the capsule, holds half a pound of something. The brick business is just packaging. So somebody will pay two thousand dollars a pound to package something? These crooks are getting half a million dollars to make five hundred bricks? And that doesn't get them delivered, just packaged? What could be so valuable that it'd support that kind of overhead?"

"I don't know. How much are they getting on the street for cocaine these days?"

"The narc guys could give us a current number, but I recall hearing a hundred dollars a gram a while back. That's nearly fifty grand for a pound. The people in the drug business have a problem with drug-sniffing dogs. It'd be worth a lot of money to beat those dogs, and maybe they think these bricks can do it."

I tried to get back to the problem of the CID man's involvement in the brickyard business. "Did the voice of the boss sound like anybody you know?"

"No. The building may have enough of an echo to make voices sound different. But when we see the faces I'll know. Let's take this to my house. Fearsome's got me all set up."

Dolan's rec room was quite comfortable. Several black boxes were on a table, allowing Dolan to screen the recorded video tracks on a fifteen inch monitor, and select any or all of the eight tracks to watch simultaneously. His big screen TV was hooked up as a repeater, showing in living color everything that the monitor was showing in black and white. Vince and I lounged in comfort on overstuffed chairs to watch the show.

The sound of the door banging shut started the audio and video, and we had a good view of two men walking in and going directly to the press. The cameras were mounted high overhead. At first the men had their heads down, looking at the press and the dust, and all we could see were the tops and backs of their heads. But when they looked up to see the places where the dust was blowing in, two of the cameras captured their faces clearly. Dolan let out a yell. "Look at that son of a bitch! Him, of all people! I've got to get the commander on this! He's gonna shit a brick!" He stopped the show and switched to show just those two camera tracks, frozen on the two faces looking right into the cameras.

Dolan got onto his phone and walked into an adjacent room where the furnace and air conditioner are located. Vince and I looked at each other, wondering what all the excitement was about. "Did you recognize either one of those guys?" I asked Vince.

"No, they're both strangers to me. Dolan sure knew one of 'em, though."

"While we're waiting for the next act, I'm gonna make a call of my own. Tell Dolan I've stepped out for a little fresh air."

I got the Sheriff on the phone and filled him in quickly. He agreed to come over immediately but silently, and say that I'd told him we were setting up a secure viewing room here and he just stopped in while he was in the neighborhood to see what it looked like.

What happened next was like a clumsy group entrance in a poorly written play. Dolan and I came back into the rec room at the same time. I winked at Vince and said, "Jan's feeling better. She was a little queasy this morning."

"Maybe a little morning sickness?" Vince shot back with a smile. "You wouldn't be keeping anything from your friends, would you?"

"If that's what it is, it'd be news to me."

I resumed my seat, but Dolan was pacing. "I got the commander, explained that we have something here that he needs to see, and that I couldn't explain over the phone. He's on his way."

The State Police Commander was coming from twenty miles away, but the Sheriff had only two miles to travel, so he arrived first. He came in smiling. "Hey, Dolan, Jack told me you were setting up a viewing room here and I wanted to see what it looks like. I'm thinking that we ought to include one in the remodeling that's planned for our building. Oh, hey, that's a great picture there. You can see every line in their faces. Show that to a jury and you'd get a conviction right off. This was shot up at the old mine? Must be some great cameras to do so well with the dim light in that building. Hey, isn't that, oh, what's his name?"